2 May 2009Boundaries

Random gem written sometime last year…

I got to work about ten minutes early today, which is pretty typical, and the weather was brisk but otherwise gorgeous, which is less typical, so I went up on the boardwalk before stepping in the office.

I had one of my rare but always much-enjoyed morning cigarettes and also a bit of a think. I looked out at the empty, sun-filled beach and the blue blue water and the little rock pier that people fish off of in the evenings and thought, boundaries. I’m surrounded by boundaries. In this case large important boundaries like the one between land and sea. Also the one to my right between Seagate, a private gated neighborhood, and the rest of Coney “housing-project-and-run-down-tourist-trap” Island. I thought about class boundaries and geographical boundaries and finally personal boundaries, which I don’t particularly have. I thought about how, as much as I don’t like boundaries, they’re kind of necesary, and then I wondered if that’s really true. I thought about an Ursula K. Leguin short story, “She Un-Names Them,” about Eve un-naming the animals; leaving each his own personal name but taking away the species distinctions between them. Then I thought about anarchy. Could it ever really work? How can you create an anarchist society without also creating the fatal power vacuum that will inevitably lead to rule by the biggest stick?